


In the Flesh

by LadySmutterella



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Body Image, Facial Hair, M/M, Self-Hatred, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 20:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10906893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySmutterella/pseuds/LadySmutterella
Summary: The light in motel bathrooms is unforgiving; the mirrors are huge. There’s no way to escape, nowhere else to look.





	In the Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This, in case you can't tell, is a very personal piece. 
> 
> It deals with weight issues and self-loathing and learning to try to see yourself through someone else's eyes.
> 
> Thank you to Jiksa and Scarredsodeep who enabled and supported me through this, and to Aka who unwittingly gave me the idea to write it. I love you all and do not deserve you. 
> 
> It's for the facial hair square on my bingo card, because even when I rip my soul out and expose it on AO3 I can't let go of my competitive nature.

Flesh. Flesh is the problem. The soft, wobbling weight of it. Pinning him down and holding him back. Trapping him in his body.

Pete has it easy. He can slip free the surly bonds of Earth and follow his muse, tripping, feather light, from word to word until he’s woven a web to entrap the unwary. He’s gossamer, moonlight, insubstantial as desire or hope. He’s a creature of extremes – of voracious hunger that forgets to eat, of poetry so frantic and chaotic and unstoppable that it trips all over itself on its way out and still gives no clue about what Pete really feels.

Patrick can’t manage that. He can’t manage any of it.

He’s the creature who gets trapped in sticky strands; he’s made of mud, of food, of despair that tastes of boredom and cold pizza. Feelings become flavours, flavours become food, food becomes flesh, flesh weighs him down and traps him in its soft folds. It’s a cycle he cannot escape. 

The light in motel bathrooms is unforgiving; the mirrors are huge. There’s no way to escape, nowhere else to look. All he can see is flesh – heavy and pallid, his thighs red from chafing, his skin marked by silver rivers that run in lines where he should be breaking apart rather than stretching. 

Patrick showers until his skin is pink and rubbed raw. He scrubs himself dry, and tries not to care how rough the hotel towels are. He does what he needs to do to keep going, because he’s a professional, because he’s trying to survive. He doesn’t look himself in the eye. 

“Dude.” Pete is sprawled out on a bed, eyes fixed on the muted TV screen, lazy, indolent and utterly comfortable in his skin. Patrick feels a spike of resentment that hits him like a punch to the solar plexus. “Did you leave me any hot water?” 

“Yes,” Patrick says, biting the word off and turning away from Pete to find something clean to wear. 

“Sure,” Pete says, but he gets off the bed and goes into the shower so Patrick counts that as a win. 

He leaves pizza behind though, the box open on his bed, smelling of cheese and pepperoni. Patrick gets dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt, trying not to look at it, but who’s he kidding? He doesn’t have willpower. It’s the character flaw that’s writ large in every line of his body. 

Patrick sits on the edge of his own bed, looking at it, fighting its siren call, but in the end he reaches out and snags a slice, choking down each bite. 

He wouldn’t normally stop at just one slice, but the shower turns off and he hears the sound of Pete climbing out and moving around the bathroom. He doesn’t want Pete to catch him. Eating is secret and shameful, and it doesn’t matter how close Pete’s become, the thought of eating in front of him – of letting Pete see him weak like this – makes Patrick’s stomach turn. 

He closes the box and lies down in bed, trying to look asleep and innocent of pizza-theft. 

It takes a few minutes for Pete to emerge, and by the time he does, Patrick is peeking through his eyelashes at the bathroom door. What he sees steals the breath from his lungs. 

Pete is still damp from the shower. The towel he’s wrapped around himself is riding low on his hips. His skin is tight and golden over sleek muscles; his tattoos signpost a path over his body that Patrick tracks with his eyes; there isn’t a wasteful inch to him. He’s strong and smooth and supple. He’s beautiful, and unreal, and everything that Patrick isn’t. 

“You okay?” Pete asks. “You look weird.”

It’s too close to what Patrick’s thinking and he chokes out a laugh that’s utterly mirthless. 

“Of course I do.” He turns away from Pete, lying on his side and squinting his eyes shut. He hopes the message is clear, but Pete… Well, Pete never knows when to leave well enough alone. 

“Hey.” Pete’s weight on the edge of the bed rolls Patrick towards him. Patrick tries to resist, but he can’t. Pete has his own gravity; Patrick is stuck forever, orbiting him. “What’s wrong?”

“Pete…” It comes out like a whine. Patrick hates it, but it’s just another tiny drop in the ocean of self-loathing. “Let me sleep.”

Pete looks at him, considering. “That’s not it,” he says at last, because he’s always perceptive when Patrick least needs it. “What is it?”

Patrick dredges up the last of his adult communication skills. “Fuck off,” he says and buries his face in the pillow. 

“Trickster.” Pete lies down behind him, wrapping himself around every part of Patrick he can reach. His skin is damp and smells of motel soap, and Patrick is painfully aware that he’s too naked and too close. “Tell me?”

“Fuck off,” Patrick says again, because he doesn’t have the words for this – for the envy and desire that are choking him – and he tries to wriggle away but Pete has him pinned. 

It escalates fast, and Pete – as always – is merciless in pressing his advantage and knows how ticklish Patrick is. 

“Tell me,” he says again when he’s got Patrick pink-cheeked and panting under him, wrists pinned and his shirt riding up over the bulge of his stomach. Pete’s face seems very close to Patrick’s, and Patrick doesn’t dare look down, afraid of what happened to the towel during their tussle. 

“Don’t,” Patrick says, his voice too breathy, too high. “Just…”

His eyes flick away and Pete leans back.

“What?” he asks, and he looks down at Patrick, looks down until his eyes rest on Patrick’s exposed midriff. His eyes widen. “Oh.”

“No.” Patrick tries to get away, but he can’t. Pete has him pinned too firmly in place. 

“Is this…” Pete’s words trail off and he skims the back of his knuckles down over Patrick’s ribs.

“Don’t,” Patrick says. “Please… Pete.”

“Yeah,” Pete says, but he sounds like he’s a million miles away. “So…”

He shifts himself down Patrick’s body, letting go of his wrists, but keeping his eyes fixed on Patrick’s. 

He’s running his hands down Patrick’s torso. Patrick could get up now if he wanted to. He stays still, lies there, pinned by Pete’s gaze every bit as much as he was by his hands. 

“You know,” he says, slowly and deliberately running the pads of his fingers over the too-large swell of Patrick’s stomach. “I’ve always been jealous of this.”

His eyes are still on Patrick’s. Patrick can’t breathe. 

“You don’t break apart,” he says, conversationally, “or float away. You’re _there_ , you know?” His hands are very warm, but still Patrick shivers under their touch. “No one ever looks at you and wonders if you’re alive, or if you’re real.” He stretches his fingers out, spanning the width of Patrick’s stomach, the callouses catching against the soft skin. “No one looks for the cracks in you.” He dips his head and brushes his lips against Patrick’s skin, like it’s an act of devotion. 

“I don’t crack.” Patrick’s voice breaks on the words. “I _can’t_.” He tries to sit up, but Pete’s hands are warm and heavy where he’s softest and most vulnerable, and he ends up flopping back down with his hands over his face. “I’m too soft.”

Pete shakes his head, the stubble on his chin scraping against Patrick’s stomach. 

“You’re alive,” he says. “You’re sunshine in skin.” He rests his face down, letting Patrick’s soft flesh pillow him. “Every inch of you is alive and warm and…” He breaks off. The scruff on his chin is prickling and scratching. Patrick welcomes the pain – it’s stopping him from flying apart. 

“You should stop,” Patrick says. He doesn’t sound sure. He shifts his hand, but instead of pushing Pete away, it turns traitor and cards through his hair. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

There are a hundred reasons – the band, the press, the fans – but mainly (mostly) Patrick had hoped that if they ever got here, to this point, that he wouldn’t be spilling from his clothes, obscene and swollen, like something pallid and voracious, like something that should be hidden away. 

Pete… doesn’t seem to care.

He’s rubbing his face against Patrick’s belly, a giant cat intent on scent marking something that belongs to him. It scratches and burns, but somehow that makes Patrick feel better. He tightens his hold on Pete’s hair, but makes no move to guide him. It’s for comfort, comfort and connection because it feels lonely up here on his own. 

The marking isn’t metaphorical either. His skin in turning pink under Pete’s ministrations, a rash he wants to explain away as an allergic reaction, except that here and now he cannot lie to himself. 

“Pete,’ he groans. “Fuck. _Pete_.”

He barely even realises he’s hard until Pete pushes down his sweatpants, freeing Patrick’s cock. He’s being unexpectedly gentle – his touch, his hands, his eyes – and there’s space and time for Patrick to move away. Which, perversely, is why he doesn’t. 

He bites his lip and nods, and Pete’s lips twist up in the briefest smile before the dips his head and closes his lips around the head of Patrick’s cock. 

“Pete,” Patrick says again, like a plea, like a prayer, and Pete answers by swallowing him down, his mouth and throat working around him like he was born for it. 

Patrick is struck dumb by it, lost in the hot slick slide, and he comes between one thought and the next, sudden and devastating, without the chance to warn Pete. 

Pete sucks him through it, only pulling off when Patrick starts to wriggle away, over sensitive and raw. 

“Pete,” he starts, a broken record, but reaching out, wanting to touch regardless. 

Pete pulls away, though, kneeling up, fumbling his towel off and away, flinging it to the side. 

“Can I,” Pete says. “Let me…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He takes himself in hand and jerks himself off, rough and fast, his eyes fixed on Patrick, flicking between his face and his stomach like he’s trying to memorise something. There’s part of Patrick that’s still overwhelmed and scared, that wants to escape or wants Pete to come closer, because this is close to too much, but he’s fixed, held in place by Pete’s eyes and the fury of his concentration. 

He comes with a groan, spilling hot and filthy over Patrick’s skin, marking him more than the beard burn that colours Patrick’s belly. 

Afterwards he collapses over Patrick, catching himself at the last moment so he’s suspended a scant few millimetres above Patrick. Only then does he kiss him, like a honey-sweet afterthought that melts against Patrick’s lips and tongue. 

“What…” Patrick tries to ask, and Pete smiles against his mouth. 

“Shut up,” he says fondly, lying down and folding himself in against Patrick. “Sleep now.”

“But,” Patrick says. “But…”

“Sleep,” Pete says again, and Patrick has the giddy and disturbing thought that this might be the freakiest bit of the whole night – Pete advocating sleep. Patrick doesn’t argue though. He falls asleep, Pete’s arm wrapped around him, his hand cradling Patrick’s stomach.

It’s a familiar sort of new, he thinks as sleep claims him, but he can’t argue with it, not when Pete’s weight is heavy, real, and comforting, against his back, pinning him in place. 

—

He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, late enough that the road has quietened outside, but not early enough for the birdsong to have started. It’s the hour of the night to tell the truths that hide from daylight, and he knows from the pattern and cadence of Pete’s breath that he’s awake too. 

“This won’t fix me,” he says in a low voice to the silent room. “Feeling like this, it doesn’t go away because of a few pretty words and someone accepting you.”

Pete makes a noise Patrick can’t parse and presses closer, wrapping his arms tighter around Patrick’s bulk. 

“I know that,” he says in a whisper that only just reaches Patrick. “Me. Of all people. I know that.”

“I just wanted to say.” Patrick traces his fingertips over Pete’s knuckles. “I needed to say.”

There’s no easy answers, he wants to say, no guarantee of happy endings, but Pete’s right. He knows that better than anyone.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Pete says. “Not to how I feel.” And maybe, if everything else is true, this is true as well. 

Patrick closes his eyes and listens to the rise and fall of Pete’s breath.


End file.
